


The Lesser Good

by josephina_x



Category: Smallville
Genre: (Clois breakup at the beginning of the fic), (M for implied homosexuality), (re: the marriage), Amnesia, Consent Issues, Fake Marriage, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Forced Marriage, Gen, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, No Sex, Post-Finale, Post-Series, President Lex, Pretending to Be Gay, White House
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-06
Updated: 2015-09-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 15:19:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/750015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maxima needs to just stay on her own planet and stop screwing up Clark's life. So does Lex. ...Oh, wait, they have to share that one. Crap.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title: The Lesser Good  
> Author: [josephina_x](http://josephina-x.livejournal.com)  
> Fandom: Smallville / DCU (mainly Smallville)  
> Pairing: starts off Clois, subject to change  
> Rating: R (for topics concerning sexuality)  
> Spoilers: for entire series; takes place _after_ the seven-years-later  
>  Word count: ???+  
> Summary: Maxima needs to just stay on her own planet and stop screwing up Clark's life. So does Lex. ...Oh, wait, they have to share that one. Crap.  
> Warnings: Un-beta'd.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.  
> Comments: Yes, please! :)  
> Author's Note: This one's been sitting around awhile, so I'm just gonna start posting it. Prompt is from my second summer-2011 Clex Bingo card: Pretend Marriage.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"--Maxima! Hi!" Clark blurted out nervously as the strong warrior woman advanced upon him. "It's been awhile, right? How have you been?" he stammered, backing up and nearly tripping over his own feet in his haste, hands raised in a 'wait, wait!' gesture that was not quite a sign of 'surrender'.

"You deceived me!" she spat out stonily, eyes narrow as she stormed forward, hands clenched. "The Lane woman is not your one-true-love after all!"

"I-- I--" Clark stammered, eyes wide, backing around a desk hapharardly, and almost mowing down someone behind him, because Maxima showing up out of nowhere like this and looking highly determined could mean only one thing...

"I have observed you and the Lane woman from afar, and you have failed to bond with her six times thus far! Six!" She smiled a very toothy grin. " _Clearly_ your union was never meant to be -- because you are to be my mate, beloved!"

Clark was beginning to panic, and people around the bullpen were openly staring and beginning to mutter and murmur. Too much attention. _Way_ too much. "No, well, you see, that is--"

Maxima made a grab for him and he ducked and spun, and only barely managed to avoid her. "It's a cover!" he shouted.

Silence.

"It's-- a cover. Sorry, I just--" Clark gulped. Lois was going to kill him, but if he was lucky, maybe he'd get to stay on Earth to be killed by _her_ instead of dragged off-world by an alien princess who thought detaching people's heads from their spines in full-on combat was all in good fun. "I didn't meant to deceive you earlier, but you didn't really let me get in a word edgewise anyway--" and she paused, because that much was certainly true, "--but I just can't run around telling people about it because it would be a problem for-- for _him_ \--" Clark said, talking fast, because he'd gotten an idea, hearing Lois chatting away in the elevator coming up, and he prayed to god that the little-r Jimmy Olsen would forgive him for this -- they were friends after all, and what were friends for, if not playing wingman once in awhile and getting each other out of a very bad hookup?

"'Him'?" Maxima said, finally coming to a full-stop, thank god, and about time too, because Clark was just about backed up against the panel next to the elevator at this point, and had nowhere else left to go.

"Yes, well-- circumstances have changed recently and we can... --I mean, it's not as big of a problem to be seen together now as it was before, so we can be together now and--"

The door pinged and Lois strode out, irate as nothing and no-one else could be, loudly declaring, "and if you think you can just waltz in here and--" She came to a screeching halt when she caught sight of Titania. "What the hell--?!?"

Then Clark heard the man sharing the elevator with her take a step forward, and Clark closed his eyes, tilted his head back while praying heavenward that Jimmy would forgive him -- or at least play along until Clark could beg for abject forgiveness from him later -- then blindly reached a hand out sideways, grabbed the guy by the shirt, dragged him close, and kissed him full-on the lips.

...Huh. Was Jimmy taller than usual? And something about this kiss seemed familiar.

Complete silence descended around them.

Clark kept it up for a reasonable period of time, and then pulled away slightly and opened his eyes.

The man whose coat lapels he was clenching was not Jimmy.

Oh. Oh sh--. Not good. He shouldn't have done that. Not with this guy. Not with his reputation.

The man in the very expensive one-tone business suit opened his eyes and blinked up at him calmly. Then he turned his head ever-so-slightly and took in Maxima.

"You aren't planing on trying to kiss my good man here, are you Maxima?" asked the shrewd businessman with a smile.

At no point did he make any movement to pull away.

Clark couldn't help but be grateful at that moment that the billionaire he had, well, to be honest, _mauled_ , was paranoid enough about certain things that he made it a point to be at least three steps ahead on all things alien and have plans for just about every contingency. Apparently he must have had heard of Maxima's last visit to the building, if not the city in general, at some point, knew about her deathly adrenaline-spiking pheremone-overdosing kiss and her motives, and had gotten his hands on good-enough surveillance such that he could recognize her on sight.

Maxima looked between the two of them. She looked at Lois, who was in pure shock at the moment. Then she leaned forward and peered down at Clark carefully.

Then she made a disgusted, annoyed sound, turned on her heel, and huffily took her 'space portal express' right back home in the middle of the bullpen.

Clark let out a huge breath in relief that he didn't know he'd been holding.

"Mind letting go of my suit?" the man asked.

Clark swallowed heavily. "Sorry, Mr. President-Elect," he mumbled, blushing bright red, and doing just that.

Lex Luthor slowly brushed his hands down his spotless bright white jacket, nodded once, then slowly turned and walked down the main corridor into the bullpen. He went up to Perry White's office, walked in, and closed the door with a 'click'.

Which was audible because the bullpen was still so silent that even a human with unaugmented hearing could hear a pin drop.

...at least for the next five seconds. Then it burst back into it usual roar, amped up a few tens of decibels or so.

Clark bit his lip, stared at the floor, shuffled his feet, and pointedly did not look at Lois at all.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The next morning after coming in to work, Clark wasn't sure why he'd been called up to LexCorp's 60'th floor office, but he was worried that it might be for an interview of the current CEO. He'd always tried to avoid interviews with Luthor; Lex was still just as sharp as he'd ever been, and god help him if Luthor saw through the stammering reporter act. Lois generally took them outright, but now...

But now it looked like he'd gotten Luthor's attention in a very bad way.

Well, maybe it wouldn't be an interview. Maybe it would be just be some creative private torture for daring to touch -- let alone kiss -- him yesterday. Lex was certainly good enough at that when he applied himself to inflicting things on Superman, and he had an even more stringent personal-space boundary now than he'd used to even back in Smallville.

_Oh hell -- not private. Public. This is going to be a **public** dressing-down,_ Clark realized morosely as he stepped into the office, seeing Lex seated at his desk at the far end of the room with his fingers steepled in a power-gesture, and all of the people in-between him and his nemesis. Standing room only.

"What the hell is wrong with you!!" one of the men screamed at him, coming up to him and shaking a newspaper in his face. Clark turned and backed up a step at the attack from an unexpected vector, and It took a second for Clark to recognize him -- he was one of Luthor's presidential campaign PR staff. He was so red in the face Clark feared they might need to call him an ambulance, and the newspaper was so crumpled he couldn't make out any of the articles, the man was clutching it in his fist so hard.

"What have you been telling people?" another demanded, from his other side. Clark flinched away from the soon-to-be vice president of the country. Clark should've figured that Mr. Pete Ross would've had an issue with Clark messing up his office's image, let alone getting involved in his work affairs. They hadn't exactly parted on horribly good terms after their last encounter in Metropolis and the whole thing with the meteor-rock gum, after all.

"A-about what?" Clark asked, getting a sinking feeling.

"About what? About what?" he heard parroted about by the others. Clark wanted to just run. This was worse than getting kicked out of the apartment by Lois last night, by far. Maybe if he was lucky he'd manage to get through this with the clothes on his back, too, but considering how the atmosphere screameda willingness to tear strips off of him, it wasn't looking likely.

"You don't know what we're talking about?" the PR man sneered, sarcastic, talking down to him.

"The... the kiss?" Clark swallowed heavily. "It, it wasn't-- I didn't mean--"

"Jesus Christ, a kiss. A kiss? You think this is about that?" the PR man spat out.

"What _the hell_ have you been _telling_ people?" the vice-president-elect repeated, gritting it out through his teeth, fists clenched.

Clark glanced between them nervously. _Not the kiss? But, then what..._ "I haven't been telling anyone anything. I-- I just-- everybody seemed to know about Maxima. And the whole-- the death-kiss thing that... I almost... They said they felt bad about it and... I didn't even have to explain." He'd just tried to keep his head down, and took the sympathetic pity and condolences, and somehow managed to make it through the rest of the day at work without getting himself set on fire by Lois, mostly by avoiding her like the plague until his shift had finally ended and he'd escaped the building like _it_ was on fire.

Pete and the PR man both stared at him, then something seemed to dawn on the PR man. "You don't know," he said incredulously. "You-- Christ. You can't be serious. It's all over the news! Even your own paper's idiot gossip column! Don't you read your own paper?!"

"I'm an investigative reporter; I don't read the society pages," Clark said blankly.

The PR man sneered at him and shoved the paper at him. Clark carefully smoothed it out, looked at the large picture of Lex on he front, then read the headline that went with it and blanched.

"I-- I-- wait, that's not--" he stammered, feeling the blood drain down towards his feet. "I didn't-- I swear--!" He looked up, wide-eyed at the PR man, at the vice-president.

How stupid he had been. Clark knew better than that. He did. But for once in his career, he hadn't followed through. He had survived Maxima, he'd barely survived Lois' initial mania once he'd gotten back to their shared apartment -- he couldn't avoid her there -- and he had just figured that it was a big stroke of luck that Lex must have immediately told Perry and the higher-ups about Maxima. He'd assumed _(god, never assume anything, Clark! stupid, stupid stupid!)_ that Lex had explained the situation, and that the news had spread quickly -- because gossip went faster in a newspaper business than anywhere else. He'd _assumed_ that everyone had come to the conclusion that everything he'd been blathering about had been a lie because he'd been trying to keep from... well, dying, since that's what happened to humans that got kissed by her, and in a way losing his life on earth was a form of death. He actually hadn't realized how true that was, exactly, until what he'd had with Lois was burning down around his ears and he realized that he didn't have anywhere else to go -- Watchtower had moved to space, and it wasn't set up for someone to crash there for a night, let alone _live_ there, and he couldn't go back to Smallville, he just couldn't...

Clark glanced back down at the copy of the Daily Planet he was holding and shivered. Nope, it hadn't changed in the last five seconds.

"President-Elect's Gay Love!" shouted the headline. "Illicit affair revealed -- the secret marriage between billionaire and farmboy-reporter!"

Then, finally, he looked back up between his attackers, at Lex.

Lex met his gaze and held it. Clark froze.

"Get out." Lex stated flatly and unequivocally.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark backed up two steps in automatic reaction to the cold words, stumbling -- over god knew what, the smashed-down carpet threads? -- before Lex clarified, feeling highly exasperated, "Not you, Kent. You stay. Everyone else, out."

People turned and stared at him incredulously, while others glanced among themselves, murmuring. No-one moved towards the door.

Lex stood abruptly and slammed both hands down on his desk. _**"NOW!!!"**_ he bellowed at the top of his lungs.

Everyone got out.

Except Kent, who, per earlier instruction, stayed frozen in pace where he was, eyes wide and staring, like a deer-in-headlights, pinned down and unable to move.

Lex kept an implacable gaze on the reporter, because he considered himself a fair hand at reading people. He had no doubt in his mind that if he glanced away for a second, or possibly even blinked, that it wouldn't matter that Lex was the man's employer, owned half the city, and could utterly ruin the man with barely any effort at all -- Mr. Clark Jerome Kent would bolt, regardless of Lex's earlier command and the current situation he was facing. Vanish without a trace, most likely.

And he couldn't have that, now, could he?

Lex took a deep breath and attempted to calm himself. He only succeeded in regaining outward composure, but he wasn't surprised at this.

He sat down smoothly, and made an abrupt gesture to indicate that Kent approach his desk.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	2. Chapter 2

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark walked forward like a mannequin with someone tugging his strings -- jerkily and without any desire to do so, but having no means with which to fight it.

Luthor motioned to a chair in front of the desk. "Sit."

Clark sat. Or his legs gave out. His mind wasn't currently up for determining the distinction between the two.

"Is there anything you'd like to say to me?" Lex asked smoothly.

"I'm sorry about kissing you; I thought it was Jimmy in the elevator with Lois and that he wouldn't mind, much." _Please don't kill me,_ Clark mentally begged. There were plenty of weapons he'd heard rumor of Lex using on common humans that would have just as ill an effect on a Kryptonian, and for perpetrating far less heinous acts upon him. Clark was having a hard time thinking of a reason why he'd been so against going away with Maxima, now, if it would have avoided something like this.

"Anything else?" Lex prompted.

"I didn't know that... that..." Clark tried to keep the pained look off of his face. "I should've tried to explain that I'd been lying to get Maxima to stop. I thought that... everybody had understood what would happen if she had... that you had already said... that..." He ground to a stop. "I'm so, so sorry."

"...That's it?" Lex asked.

Clark gulped. "I'll get them to print a retraction," he whispered. He didn't know how he'd convince everyone to the contrary, so late after the fact, but he'd find a way. Why had everyone had to have been so vague about what they'd said? ...Oh, right, Kansas, and being gay in Kansas. Still a hangup for most people, apparently, even in Metropolis.

"You'll do no such thing."

Clark blinked. His brain shorted out for a second.

"...What?" he croaked.

"You'll do no such thing," Lex repeated calmly. "There will be no retraction printed, no effort made to dissuade anyone to the contrary."

"Why?" Clark whispered, head whirling.

Lex leaned back in his chair far too casually, which sent off all sorts of warning bells in Clark's brain, and as he watched his nemesis got a slow-growing, razor-thin smile.

"...Would you believe that I think you would make the perfect First Husband?"

~*~*~*~*~*~


	3. Chapter 3

~*~*~*~*~*~

 _Help..._ Clark thought quietly, for the hundredth time that day.

Unfortunately, there was no Superman to rescue him, because he was Superman.

"Was" being the operative term -- for he "was" no longer -- because at this point, Clark was pretty sure that what Lois had "started" the previous night in ending their eight-years-drawn-out relationship with yelling and screaming and, eventually -- once she'd calmed down to coherency again -- a long scathing series of retorts and accusations that Clark had been patently unable to defend himself against... What she'd started, Lex had finished rather absolutely with his "proposal"-that-wasn't-a-request. Clark couldn't run off and be Superman when he was going to have to be sharing close quarters with Lex practically 24-7, and the Secret Service watching him all the time to boot. He couldn't, because Lex would find out all-over-again who he was during his 'working' hours, only this time without the dubious benefit of Smallvillian memories of a once-upon-a-time-friendship to 'soften' the realization, and if that happened... No. Just, no. It was probably just as well: Clark wasn't even sure that he could summon the chutzpa to don the far-too-revealing cape-and-tights at this point anyway, let alone the energy.

For a brief moment, Clark wondered if anyone would actually notice a Superman-gone-missing. Or even care.

It wasn't like there weren't plenty of heroes nowadays, and not all that many villains to go around. And it wasn't like worldwide crises happened every other day (thank god for that). So it wasn't like anyone really needed him. Or would miss him.

\--except maybe Lex, who apparently needed someone to constantly remind him that too much purple was _too much purple_. Though that wasn't exactly a job for Superman -- Clark doubted Lex would listen to him in the super-suit any more than he was listening to him in his reporter-suit, and maybe even a great deal less.

Clark wished for the hundredth time that afternoon that they could just get an interior decorator, or designer, or feng-shui-person, or _whatever_ they were called, and be done with it. He wasn't cut out for this stuff, he was sure of it, and he was reminded of the fact that Lois had been the one to decide on the look of the apartment and make all of the decisions on the furnishings and decorations and everything, while he'd been stuck in his time-warped return from the Phantom Zone, he and Oliver.

Then someone made some smart-ass remark about Superman, and things got worse.

Lex snorted, or about as close as he ever came to the sound. "You were surprised that The Alien skipped town when I won the Oval Office? Either he's being petty and thinks that refusing his so-called 'help' will work against me somehow, or he's afraid of what I'll do to him with this much more influence. Frankly, I'm not sure I care much which, so long as he _stays_ gone for good." From his tone, though, Clark realized that Luthor probably thought that 'Superman' was actively working behind the scenes to overthrow him from office, or something like that. God, it just gave him such a headache these days to even think about it. And having to spend so much time around Luthor and his Superman-hating certainly wasn't _helping_ help his self-esteem or his confidence.

Well, at least this meant that _someone_ noticed Superman's absence and cared. ...Sort of.

It was far more reassuring than it should have been. _He's your nemesis -- remember that, Kal-El? Nemesis._

Clark sat down on a nearby sofa -- extremely ugly, and apparently on the list of "necessary to keep" furnishings for this particular room -- and again wracked his brain trying to think of a way to contact the League. He was drawing a huge blank, had no real clue what Lex's true motives were for all this, and could _really_ use the help to _getting the hell out of this._ Unfortunately, he seriously doubted that Pete would help him out on this one, given his reaction earlier, and Clark had barely had a moment out of Lex's direct line of sight in the hours since "the proposal", and no chance to call them himself. His League communicator was with the rest of his Superman stuff, back in Lois' apartment, and his old League-given cellphone was back at the Planet, as he hadn't been about to risk bringing it onto the LexCorp premises and getting it confiscated by building security when he'd found himself all-but-ordered to present himself at Lex's office earlier this morning. And he didn't dare try to call the League on an insecure line -- _best-_ case, Lex's people, the Secret Service, and every triple-letter-agency on the government rolls would _only_ be tapping the line and restricting themselves to _just_ listening in. Chloe may be the new White Queen (Clark suspected, but had never been able to completely confirm -- stupid plausible-deniability), but even she had limits, and Clark wasn't too sure how active his mother was as the Red Queen these days, either... --So, outside assistance was probably out.

What the hell was he going to do?

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex noticed when Kent collapsed on the couch rather abruptly, and realized that the man was flagging, and had been for some time.

He knew he should have just given up the interior rearrangement of the Oval Office, and surrounding rooms, hours ago -- really, it was a waste of his time; he had far more pressing matters he should be attending to. He'd originally only planned on exerting his direct authority long enough to set in the minds of the White House staff who the new man in charge really was, and how he was to be interacted with and obeyed. But when he'd finally stopped commanding and commandeering people long enough to think of asking his supposed gay husband's opinion, and he'd gotten a response back in the form of a terse "too much purple" ...well, he just hadn't been able to help himself. He'd been surprised, which didn't happen often, and curious, which happened even less, these days.

By all accounts, Kent was supposed to be a timid little mouse of a person: a stammering, spectacle-wearing, easily swayed, highly-dismissible, instantly-forgettable, and overall fairly innocuous individual, if not an ninny and a nincompoop to boot, barely able to hold down his reporting job. If Lex was going to be saddled with gay status and a "First Husband" by the American public, Kent sounded the type that was as far from power-hungry as they came, and would be a pushover in terms of staying out of Lex's way.

So when Kent actually expressed an opinion when asked, rather than stammering something unintelligible, and just gave Lex an unamused, direct, and long-suffering _look_ over the lenses of his glasses when Lex made it clear that he disagreed with Kent's assessment, Lex had blinked in near-shock. From what he'd heard about the man, he had fully expected Kent to verbally backtrack, dissemble, or otherwise change his mind. But the man-mouse-reporter hadn't done any such thing. So _of course_ Lex couldn't help but poke him again to see what would happen.

And so it came to pass that, over the course of the next three-and-a-half hours, Lex discovered several very interesting and rather important things about Kent: he had the patience of a saint, he didn't give an opinion unless explicitly asked, he _always_ gave a well thought out opinion _when_ asked, he had a memory like a steel trap, he paid attention to and picked up on even the most minute details, and he'd really rather be doing anything other than standing around trying to tell _other_ people what to do when he could just as easily be doing it _himself_ (like rearranging furniture or painting the walls, apparently -- Lex had had to scold him into stopping several times before he'd stopped trying to pitch in in plebean fashion).

 **Most** notably, Lex came to the startling conclusion that all those people who _supposedly_ knew Kent were **dead-wrong** about him. Kent was **_not_** a pushover: he did _not_ change his mind, once made up. --Not easily, anyway.

Lex had asked about, expounded upon, praised, cajoled, and extolled the features of the room and furnishings in general, as related to the virtues of the color purple, forty-seven times.

Clark had given various terse, short responses that varied in content from his original reply only in what proved to be a quite extensive vocabulary, especially for a reporter, _forty-seven times_.

Not once did the man back down.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Now Lex was intrigued.

People simply didn't say "no" to him, and this man, who by all accounts should have been perhaps **the** _least-likely_ person from Metropolis to stand up to him, did. In no uncertain terms, he had disagreed with Lex. Forty-seven times. Lex couldn't think of anyone who could possibly be more prone to argue with him, except perhaps for that Lane woman, and she certainly wouldn't have been patient enough to put up with this.

...Hm. Maybe that was it. He'd heard that Kent had been partnered with Lane. It would make sense that Perry would stick someone with her who could try and bring her down to earth, if not reel her in from time to time, but... it didn't quite fit. Why did everyone, to a body, think that Kent was such a pushover?

Lex knew he should be more suspicious of the whole thing being a setup, but Kent was just so damn _unassuming_...

~*~*~*~*~*~


	4. Chapter 4

~*~*~*~*~*~

 _Lunch!_ Clark grinned mentally. _food-food-food_ he thought happily as he munched down a sandwich. He was in a _much_ better mood now, already. The White House cooking staff were pretty excellent, and Lex had 'dragged' him down to the kitchen to eat -- no formal tableware, no huge dining room, no standing on ceremony, just a cozy table tucked in a corner of the kitchen near the service corridor.

He sighed happily as he finished his third sandwich and reached for a fourth. He snagged a ham-and-swiss from the pile and bit down on a perfect mix of good cold-cut meat, mustard, lettuce, freshly-baked bread, and smooth creamy cheese -- there must be a local dairy nearby, it was excellent.

"Oh, you've got quite a bit of an appetite there, don't you?"

Something in the woman's tone twigged deep in his brain, and his chewing slowed. But then a second wave of realization hit, and the bite of tasty sandwich suddenly turned to ashes in his mouth.

It took an effort to chew and swallow the bit of sandwich down, and he felt sick doing so, having completely lost his appetite. It felt like a lead weight going down. Once he'd managed this, he turned his head and slowly smiled up at the matronly cook.

"I, ah, didn't have breakfast this morning," he said quietly. "It's all very good." He very carefully lowered the rest of the sandwich to the plate, without glancing down and drawing attention to his doing so.

The cook smiled back, and Clark inexplicably felt a need to run and hide.

He'd forgotten somehow. This wasn't the old Lex. They weren't in the old mansion in Smallville. This wasn't Lex's local cook, who wasn't a gossip, and Clark _wasn't_ a growing boy. He couldn't eat half-a-plate stacked high with sandwiches at the kitchen table, and it wouldn't be to Cook's obvious pleasure or Lex's soft-smiling silent encouragement.

He also couldn't go home and eat another half-dozen cheap PBJ sandwiches later to finish taking the edge off.

These people would know _exactly_ how much he ate. Or didn't eat -- as he stared up at the smiling woman, Clark felt like he'd never be hungry again; that the ill feeling in the pit of his stomach would never go away. This went well beyond the usual, more obvious surveillance of normal security personnel and papparazzi hordes. He'd gotten used to the constant watching of his person as Superman, down to every little action and move he made, but this was completely different -- a far worse and highly intrusive sort of thing entirely, unbelievably more so.

People would be watching him _eat..._

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex watched Kent devour sandwiches like it was serious business and with great gusto. He couldn't blame the man -- the taste was exquisite. It was really too bad that he was going to have to--

Then he nearly choked on a mouthful of sandwich himself as he saw Kent's reaction to the Cook's far-from-innocent comment. It _hadn't_ been nice, but it should not have had the man going pale and still, and put him completely off his feed. Lex had to made an effort to stay neutral-faced and _not_ clench his teeth as he watched Clark give a weak smile back and attempt to make simple chit-chat with the bitch.

Something else occurred to him, and his eyes narrowed slightly as he ran his eyes across Clark's form and assessed his build under the clothing. He actually found it more difficult than usual -- the ill-fitting suit ( _dear lord, was it the same one he'd been wearing the day before?_ ) made it rather difficult to judge. Lex did not consider himself a paranoid man, but Kent honestly could not have chosen better clothing for the express purpose of masking his build if he'd tried. About all he could be sure of was that Kent had broad shoulders, and was rather tall, over six feet. Four sandwiches after a missed meal was not unreasonable for someone of his general build. Lex mentally frowned. What had set him off so badly?

...Another small mystery. The man seemed full of them. He supposed that could wait. --This, however, could not.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"You're fired."

Clark, startled, glanced over at Lex, who was reclining in his hard wooden chair as poised and content as any housecat. His interjection had been at complete odds with his unconcerned air.

"What?" said the Cook.

"You. --Ethel, yes? You're fired. Gather your belongs and leave. Immediately."

The woman looked like she couldn't believe what she was hearing. "You can't be serious--" she began, with a disbelieving laugh.

"I assure you, I am perfectly serious," Lex replied, his posture radiating ease as he set down the rest of the sandwich back onto the plate and wiped his hands with a cloth napkin. "I want you gone within the hour. If you are still on the premises after that point, I will have you arrested for trespassing." He tossed the napkin onto the plate, stood up, and walked out, leaving the cook opening and closing her mouth like some great fish. He'd left her with no recourse whatsoever for argument, discussion, or defense.

Clark, horrified, glanced up at the cook, then at Lex's retreating back, then stood up quickly and chased after Lex. God, it wasn't possible, was it? Lex hadn't actually fired the woman because of _him_ , had he?

~*~*~*~*~*~


	5. Chapter 5

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex heard fast-approaching footsteps and quashed his usual reaction to being chased from behind -- pre-emptive, swift physical retaliation.

He felt a hand quickly touch his shoulder -- but it retracted before he could respond -- right before Clark caught up to his side and matched him, keeping up by adopting an identical, fast, distance-eating stride. "You-- you can't fire her!"

Lex clenched his jaw and glanced over at Kent. "The hell I can't."

Kent got a dangerous flash in his eyes that disappeared so quickly that Lex almost believed he must have imagined it. _Almost._ "Fine, then. You _shouldn't_ fire her."

"And why not?" Lex scoffed.

"Besides the fact that she's practically an institution, and has served five presidents before you?" Clark ground out with apparent incredulous disbelief for Lex's behavior. "That you're going to have a hell of a time finding someone well-versed in the dishes from every country that has ever sent a diplomat for a luncheon or dinner meal here -- as well as the ability to cater those huge White House functions at a moment's notice, and handle all the pantry-ordering and wine acquisition -- who is also trustworthy enough to never take a bribe or try to poision anyone, and aware enough to oversee other workers and prevent any accidental or on-purpose poisonings from stupid errors, too?" He glanced over at Kent, who had only paused for a breath and was now obstinately squaring his jaw and opening his mouth again.

He picked up the pace as Kent fired his next volley. "Besides the fact that at least half the kitchen staff will quit in protest, too, and you'll have to try and find workers that are just as trustworthy for even the menial kitchen scut work? You mean besides that? Everyone's going to think you fired her because of me!"

Son of a bitch.

"You think quite a bit of yourself, don't you?" Lex replied dryly as he arrived at his destination. He opened the door to the Oval Office and waved Kent in ahead of him briskly. Kent all-but-stomped in, before rounding on him, and Lex quickly entered and closed the door behind them only just in time to prevent the rest of the conversation from echong down the hallway.

He watched Kent blow out an annoyed breath and force down a sigh. "Look, if you really are planning on keeping me around," and from Kent's tone, Lex suddenly realized that the man thought he was just being jerked around -- as though Lex would waste his precious time on such a petty, ill-intentoned form of amusement! "--then I need to be able to get along with these people. But from what you just did back there?" Kent complained, flipping a hand at the closed door, towards the hallway to the kitchens. " _No-one_ will believe that that's not what happened, regardless of what I say or do from now on, and that means that the rest of the staff will be on _eggshells_ around me. They're either going to be afraid of me, or hate me, or maybe both, and they'll be worried that I'll either go running to you about every last little thing I don't like, or that you'll take your own initiative to 'punish' the staff for doing or not doing what you want when it comes to me."

Kent strode away from him, pushing his palsm at his temples and shaking his head, before turning back towards him. "It will be bad enough that they'll believe that, but they will most certainly make my life as difficult as possible in the smallest and worst ways possible, that no-one can be held accountable for. They'll certainly refuse to work with me on anything, which will undermine what little authority I might have had with them and, by extension, _your_ authority with them as well, in the long run." Kent took a deep breath before continuing. "I _also_ don't like the idea that the rest of the staff will be effectively held hostage to my good behavior and your mercurial moods. So, just... at _least_ tell me you didn't fire her because of me," the man half-begged.

Christ. Kent was effectively married to him, Lex Luthor -- one of the most powerful and richest men in the world -- and he would be staying in the White House for the forseeable future -- an honor and priviledge bestowed upon a _very_ rare few, for god's sake -- yet he was acting like he thought that from this point forward his life was going to be a _living hell!_ It was as though the man had no concept that people would _kill_ for what he'd been given, simply had handed to him as if offered up on a platinum diamond-encrusted platter. Frankly, Kent's behavior had more in common with a young child being offered a delicacy made of green vegetables, who had turned up their nose at it and then had that nose grasped firmly and the food shoveled right in anyway.  And then, with their face all scrunched up as they chewed, swallowed it down as though it was no better than a particular nasty brand of medicine that they'd been forced to take. Clearly Kent had _no_ proper sense of grownup taste, shelved right up alongside his utter lack of propriety.

The whole Kent situation was giving Lex a headache, and he'd been on Capitol Hill and 'married' to him for less than twenty-four hours, so far.

"I didn't fire her because of you," Lex finally said after a long pause, while slipping his hands into his pants pockets and cautiously eyeing his not-so-significant other.

"Thank god," Kent said, collapsing on a couch in the Oval Office.

And apparently that was all Kent had to say on the matter.

"...Aren't you going to ask why?" Lex said patiently, completely contrary to how he was feeling at the moment. He took a seat opposite Kent on the other couch.

"Is it any of my business?" came the frustrated reply.

Lex's eyes narrowed. "We're married, so yes. It is."

Kent glanced over at him with the beginnings of a frown. "No, we're not."

"Yes, we are. I had the paperwork filled out and filed today." He'd had it backdated to an appropriate period, too. It wouldn't do for people to think that they'd gotten married _after_ Kent had kissed him in the newsroom. He really didn't need people thinking that Kent was _that_ good a kisser.

"...I didn't sign anything," Kent said suspiciously, peering up at him, a frown furrowing his brow.

Lex waved his hand, like that of no consequence. _Details._

"If you did, then you forged my signature," Kent persisted, eyes narrowing. "That means it's not legal. It doesn't count."

"You gave your assent. That's enough." Lex reiterated.

_Like hell I did!_ Kent's body language screamed.

"No, it _isn't_ enough. That's why those forms require legally-witnessed signatures and a delay in filing. Usually several days from the first request for the paperwork," Kent replied slowly, carefully, as though he was making a great effort to not grit his teeth. The man didn't look very happy with him.

Lex felt zero guilt at this pronouncement, because if Kent hadn't been all right with the idea, he shouldn't have let Lex bully him into going along with it. He _was_ perfectly capable of saying 'no' under adverse conditions, after all -- he'd made that _quite_ clear this afternoon.

"Well, I can see why your reporting work is sub-par," Lex replied smoothly with a smirk as he changed topics back to the firing of the kitchen head. "You're horribly closed-minded, and you haven't the least bit of curiosity."

To his amazement, kept well off of his own face, he saw anger flash in Kent's eyes as the man nearly _bristled_ at the insult. Nearly. He managed to get himself under control _very_ quickly. "Would you actually tell me if I asked?" Kent shot back, cooly.

"I'd consider it, depending on how nicely you asked," Lex replied in like kind.

Kent all but snorted and leaned back into the cushions a little, looking unsurprised and self-satisfied somehow, like he'd just had something he knew confirmed. "So, that's a no, then," Kent said evenly, with finality, looking away. It wasn't a question.

And that, more than anything else, truly pissed Lex off.

"I fired her for her prejudice," Lex shot back blandly. "I was planning on doing so even before she pulled that little stunt in the kitchen. Her behavior towards you just gave me the perfect excuse. No-one is going to think badly of you for it," he scoffed, waving a hand imperiously at the door and all those on the other side of it.

And then he had a curious and unpleasant feeling as he watched Kent give him a blank, uncomprehending look.

"What stunt?" Kent said, sounding confused.

"The way she was treating you." Kent only looked more confused. "Certainly people don't usually treat you like that..." _do they?_

Kent shifted in place on the couch, and somehow gave the impression of a shrug without actually making the motion.

Well _that_ was alarming ...and vaguely horrifying. Was Kent so used to being treated... like _that_... that he didn't even notice anymore?

Lex's headache got worse.

"Kent, she's highly prejudiced against gay men," Lex stated baldly, in a way he never, ever did. Unfortunately, he had the feeling that this middle-of-the-road so-called 'investigative' reporter wouldn't have gotten the memo, otherwise.

"...Not that I don't appreciate you being open-minded and all, but why do you care? You're not even-MMPH!"

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark's eyes went wide as he stared up at Lex, who had practically leapt across the coffee table between them and was currently straddling Kent's lap with his hands clapped across Kent's mouth.

He leaned a little back into the couch as Lex leaned in a little more towards him.

Lex stopped abruptly, and his eyes narrowed.

Clark froze.

Lex began to lean in torturously slow, and then ducked his head to the side, with his mouth right up next to Clark's ear.

"Kent," he whispered. "Let me make one thing _perfectly_ clear."

Clark swallowed hard.

"I don't care if we're in public, in private, or surrounded by any number of individuals, trusted or otherwise. I don't care how much surveillance you think there is or isn't around at any given point, and who is listening in. I don't care if you think it's only the two of us in a room, or if you're out in the wilderness without a single other living soul within two-hundred miles."

Lex paused to take in a breath, and Clark had to ruthlessly stifle a shudder as an electric shock of cold fear spiked down his spine when Lex's voice dropped even further, taking on a far-too-familiar, low, and **very** dangerous purr. "You are _never_ , **ever** , to even so much as _hint_ at my particular sexual orientation. With anyone. _**UNDERSTAND?**_ "

It wasn't a question.

Clark nodded slowly.

Lex leaned back and, narrow-eyed, peered into Clark's eyes for awhile.

Finally, with a single abrupt nod, he slowly removed his hands from over Clark's mouth and placed them on Clark's shoulders instead.

Clark's first words upon regaining this small freedom were: "What does her personal opinion have to do with her being fired?"

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex stared down at Kent incredulously. He could not believe that those words had come out of the man's mouth.

Lex thought back for a moment on an argument earlier that afternoon that had been repeated _forty-seven times._

...Actually, yes he could.

"Kent," he said, sitting back and trying not to sound pained. "That cook has been vocal in the past about being morally opposed to homosexual pairings. --It doesn't matter how professional she may seem otherwise," Lex cut him off, raising a hand. "It only takes one wrong comment at the worst time to offend a diplomat or member of the ruling class and set back trade negotiations and foreign relations back years. And she interacts with the staff daily."

Lex paused, dropping his hands to his thighs, and peered into Kent's eyes, looking for some glimmer of understanding. "What do you think their normal response would be, at being told only once that they are not to behave in a manner unbecoming to anyone with sexual inclinations that are... in the statistical minority... while having poison poured into their ears daily? Do you think they will do any more than grin and bear it while they look down on the people they are serving?"

Lex sighed internally as he saw Clark's frown as the thought made it through the belligerence and connected. "Do you really think that the guests of this administration -- the congressmen, the businessmen, the high-society movers and shakers, the diplomats who are trained to notice the smallest nuances in body language and word choice -- _wouldn't_ notice even the hint of the smallest slight?" He tiled his head. "Not to mention what it would mean that I was condoning such attitudes when I myself have taken on a 'First Husband'. --It's unacceptable," he ended flatly.

"But why should it even matter? It obviously wasn't a problem before, or she wouldn't have still been employed. Besides, lots of people feel strongly one way or the other, and either opinion could end up offending someone, assuming it ever came up..." and Lex saw when the flash of realization hit.

"Oh _yes_ ," Lex said sarcastically, "There's _absolutely_ no reason it would come up. Not in _this_ administration. --Right?"

Clark leveled a glare of his own up at Lex. "You can't fire someone for their beliefs. -- _Shouldn't_ ," he corrected himself. "That's just a different kind of reverse-prejudice. It doesn't make it _go away_ and it doesn't fix anything!"

"And I suppose you would be an expert at that?" Lex all-but-snorted. Kent wasn't gay; what he _was_ was a white male heterosexual in a midwest state. He wouldn't know prejudice if it bit him in the--

Clark leveled a different sort of glare up at him. "I'm a reporter for a major metropolitan newspaper," he spoke in clipped tones. "And I have friends who work the society pages. Sometimes I help edit them before they go to print. You can't write unbiased and inoffensive news articles, _or_ inflammatory editorial pieces, if you don't know where the lines are, and when not to cross them."

Lex stared down at him.

Clark stared back.

There was a knock on the door right before it was opened. Clark and Lex glanced over at the nervous-looking staff member.

"Um," the staffer stammered. "I, uh-- Oh! Cr-- I can come back later!" he said, turning a little red as he glanced between the two of them.

Lex glanced down as Clark did, and took in their relative positions: Lex sitting in Clark's lap, perfectly at-ease.

Clark turned a bit red himself, while Lex sighed internally. "The joint chiefs of staff meeting?" At the quick nodding he received, he waved the man off. "Go on and tell them -- I'll be there in a moment."

The door closed again, and Lex stared down at his "First Husband" ...who was also his first husband.

"I do believe that, between the two of us, _I_ am the one who has talked with various people, gone through all the personnel files and dossiers, and know enough about the kitchen staff situation to make a decision of this magnitude." _Not you._ "And I think that's all that need be said on that subject," Lex stated as he slid backwards smoothly and casually stood up. "However, I would just like to make one other thing perfectly clear." Lex stayed standing in front of Kent, looking down on and looming over him, quite all on purpose. He had a point to make, and he wanted Kent's full attention. " _Don't argue with me in earshot of my staff again._ "

"I'm allowed to have an opinion," Kent said stubbornly, glaring.

"And if you are able to prevent yourself from expressing it to those who should not hear it, then you will hear no more comment upon it." He tilted his head. "I would think you seem to have that in common with our ilustrious ex-cook."

"Arguing with you -- _disagreeing_ with you -- shouldn't be a fireable offense!"

"You -- and she -- were, to coin a borrowed phrase, 'undermining my authority'," Lex said, not bothering to fight back a sneer, and as he headed for the door, he tossed over his shoulder. "Or were you only paying lipservice to the idea that such a thing would bother you?"

"Did you ever give her the courtesy of a warning, or even an ultimatium, like you're giving me now?" Kent said, crossing his arms. "--Let me talk with her."

Lex blinked at him, hand stilling on the doorknob.

"I'm still firing her," Lex said finally. "I can't be seen as changing my mind for you." _Not for this, certainly._ Kent was firmly in the wrong; his opinions on the matter had no bearing here. He hadn't considered the possbility of _ever_ changing his mind for Kent, not before he realized how final the words had sounded, coming out of his own mouth. _Do I really want to be surrounded by yes-men?_ He hadn't structured LexCorp that way, but there had been _rules_ , boundaries, procedures -- people had known what was appropriate to discuss and when...

" _Fine,_ " said Kent, interrupting his train of thought. "But I'm still talking with her."

"If you can catch her before she has to leave," Lex said with a mental eyeroll. "She's going to be too busy to talk with you." _One can only hope._

Kent stood up and walked over to stand by him at the door, glaring at him stubbornly.

"I take it nothing I say will change your mind?" Lex said dryly.

"No. Guess I'm like you that way," Kent said sharply.

Lex had the urge to say something, _anything_ that--

No. He resisted it. Kent would have to learn.

He merely opened the door and gestured, and Kent walked out before him. He stepped out himself and closed the door behind him, and as they went their separate ways, Lex mentally shook his head at the man as he continued on down the hallway, back towards the kitchen, as he'd indicated he would.

_Well, **you're** going to be in for an unpleasant surprise..._

~*~*~*~*~*~


	6. Chapter 6

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark shuddered as he closed the door and treaded back down the hallway towards the Oval Office and residential wing.

 _I can't believe it. She was being so nice in the kitchen..._ he realized, rubbing his hands over his face. But once Clark had knocked tentatively on her door, at her quarters, to talk with her alone and try to apologize and make amends... He hadn't been able to get a single word in edgewise.

And, dear god, the utter _vitriol_ that woman had spewed! --And it hadn't had anything to do with Clark's behavior. Well, not his _actual_ behavior, anyway, just his perceived such. _I'm not even gay, and I **still** feel sick to my stomach._

One thing was for sure -- Clark wasn't going down to the kitchens again anytime soon. If any of the rest of them were anything like that... _Is it a treasonable offense to spit in the President's food?_ Clark wondered.

Well, not that that mattered. Clark wouldn't be eating anything again, anytime soon. Walking into the kitchens would be enough to remind Clark of her, and that would be enough to make him lose his appetite, even if the thought of people knowing his caloric intake wasn't already enough for that.

Then again, if he wanted to make sure people weren't spitting in his -- _and Lex's_ \-- food -- _or worse_ \-- then he'd probably **have** to go down to the kitchens. He'd have to watch them make it to be sure it was okay.

Clark shuddered again and pushed open the door to the Oval Office. Maybe he could just lie down for awhile on one of the couches...

When he realized the couches were both already fully-occuppied, he came to a halt and stared.

_Oops._

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex stifled a sigh and motioned Kent over to where he was seated.

Kent stayed over by the door.

"I thought you were meeting in..." Kent trailed off.

Lex did not bother to stifle his next sigh, one of irritation.

"I decided to have it in here, instead." When Kent didn't move: "It's fine; come over here," he ordered Kent.

"I was really just meaning to lie down--" Kent began, but stopped talking at Lex's curt gesture.

Lex, eyeing him, waited.

Kent frowned, but after a second or two slowly worked his way over.

"Here, now!" his Secretary of Defense objected. "Some of this is highly-classified material. He's not cleared for--"

Lex turned his head and leveled a dead-eyed stare at the man.

Then he topped it off with a thin smile.

"Well, then, I suppose you'd better get _my husband_ a clearance for it, then, _hadn't you?_ " Lex said with perfect politeness that a body could cut themselves on.

He saw try to Kent stifle a wince, _badly_ , out of the corner of his eye.

He held the Defense Secretary's gaze until the man lowered his first -- not quite cowed, more glowering, as befit the man, given his job -- but looking belligerently obedient.

"Do it today," Lex added, and given the way the man's grim smile immediately twisted downwards, he knew he'd just forestalled what might otherwise have been a _very_ long delay.

Lex turned back to Kent and patted the couch cushion by his left leg, and Kent obligingly -- though not happily -- sat down next to him.

"Now, gentlemen," Lex began, sliding back to lounge gracefully against the cushions. "Where were we?"

Kent began to shift slighly away, and Lex put a stop to that right quick by hooking an arm around Kent's waist and tugging him backwards.

There was a resistance at first, then Kent quickly glanced down and seemed to _humor_ Lex -- in that he moved back the way Lex was pulling him and settled in the crook of his arm. The emotions of mild frustrated annoyance and resigned unhappiness that were crossing the man's face as he did so had no trace of humor in them.

Honestly, if Kent kept this up, people were going to think they were in a lousy marriage. Shouldn't Kent be happier being a kept man?

Lex forced down his ire at Kent's unwillingness to work with him. Given the whispered-in-his-ear report he'd gotten a few minutes ago, along with how pale Kent had been when he'd walked in, maybe he shouldn't be too hard on the man. Apparently that ill-bred lout of an ex-cook had been so brutally nasty towards Kent, who had apparently been completely disarming and distraught at her words, that anyone who had overheard her mad little fit had been shocked and thoroughly appalled -- and that had been quite a few people indeed, because she'd been so loud as she'd went about it that _half the staff quarters had heard her_.

It was a win for Lex, of course, because the rest of the kitchen staff -- the entire White House staff, in fact, the little grapevine-gossiping lot of them -- was absolutely mortified at her behavior and up in arms by this point, if what he'd heard was in any way accurate. Some of the things she'd said had, it seemed, gone _so_ far beyond the pale that even some of the more staunch anti-gay-rights folks of the lot were washing their hands of her, a few of them even second-guessing what they believed given the racist overtones that had come out when she'd been spewing forth her hatred over him in waves.

...Not that any of that helped Kent in the least. He'd borne the brunt of something that didn't even _apply_ to him, and come out looking run-ragged. In the short-term -- right now -- things would be bad for him. But, in the longer-term... the staff would be very sympathetic.

Kent had stumbled upon the perfect solution to the problem he'd expressed worry to Lex about earlier, and, quite frankly, Lex couldn't have planned for things to fall out better if he'd _tried_.

Ah, well. That was a problem for later. Lex refocused on what his staff were telling him for now.

Soon enough, he had to blink and thoroughly ignore Kent with a little more conscious effort, because... well, it was just a little _disconcerting_ , having a miserable near-perfect stranger fall asleep on your shoulder like that...

~*~*~*~*~*~


	7. Chapter 7

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex was very proud of himself.

He'd been very _stoic_ when Kent fell asleep on his shoulder, and when the man had sleepily settled in, pressing even more closely up against him and tucking his nose down into the hollow of his neck, he hadn't reacted badly in the slightest.

He had felt a little exasperated, though, and hadn't been able to fully suppress the long-suffering look he'd given the ceiling as a few of his joint chiefs of staff exchanged 'knowing' smirks.

Kent's dozing off did seem to have the beneficial effect of lowering the voices of some of the more argumentative members, and bringing the meeting to a streamlined, bare-boned recital and a swift closure, however.

He did have a great deal more work to get done that day, though -- work that required he not stay sitting on a couch with one arm trapped behind his 'husband'. So he spent some time after the joint chiefs cleared out of the room slowly working his way free of Kent's frame -- because it could hardly be called an "embrace".

As a result of Lex's careful maneuverings, Kent ended up sprawled out a bit along the couch, head successfully pillowed by a conveniently nearby cushion, and Lex was _finally_ able to take up his proper seat of authority behind the desk of the Oval Office for the first time that day.

The chair was actually quite comfortable.

Lex swiveled back and forth in it a bit, allowing himself to revel in the sensation for a moment.

\--All right, enough of that. Time to get to work.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark blinked awake slowly, feeling a great sense of confusion. He knew he was on a couch, which was not abnormal, but the surroundings weren't familiar... which kind of was.

Clark slowly levered himself up on an elbow and peered around at the room, squinting slightly as he instinctively took in not just what was there, but what was adjacent to the room he was in, and--

He teetered off-balance and dropped on his side as he realized Lex was across the room from him, sitting at _the_ desk, and they were in the Oval Office.

Not least of which was because he hadn't just been having some random nightmare about being carried off and "married" to Luthor that had ended with him having completely fallen asleep on Lex. But worse was the fact that he was completely laid out on the sofa, which meant that _he had his feet up on the furniture in the Oval Office_ and--

Oh, wait. He didn't have his shoes on.

_....Wait._

Clark rubbed a hand across his face, not even wanting to _think_ of how _that_ may have come about -- and why, oh why hadn't he woken up?! -- and then came to his third not-so-happy revelation upon his waking.

He wasn't wearing his glasses, either.

Clark panicked a bit, scrambling about, and--

"Oh, you're awake," he heard Lex say mildly.

\--there were his glasses, right on the edge of the coffee table.

Clark grabbed them and shoved them onto his face quickly, before pushing himself upright on the couch.

...Well, Lex didn't look like he was homicidal _or_ sporting a wealth of Kryptonite-laced weaponry, so that was probably a good sign.

Except for the odd look Lex was giving him.

"Are you really that blind without your glasses on?" he was asked.

Clark flinched. He hadn't exactly groped around for them 'blindly' just then.

He opted for silence being golden.

"Hm," said Lex, and it suddenly occurred to Clark that he had no way of knowing whether Lex had held up his glasses and checked his prescription or not.

Well, in for a penny... "Did you take my glasses off of me?" Clark asked, then tried not to cringe as he really thought that one through. Because _that_ was just a little too...

Now Lex was looking at him curiously. (Well, crap.)

"I did," Lex admitted, leaning back a bit in his chair.

"...Why?" Clark asked, a little afraid of what the answer might be.

Lex tilted his head slightly, in a considering manner.

"It is my understanding that it is generally not comfortable to sleep with one's glasses on," he was told, and that left Clark blinking, because... had Lex really done that and _not noticed?_ Or just not **realized?** Except... he'd seen Clark up-close and personal as Superman on multiple occasions in the past, so was that even _possible?!_

...Or had he just not been paying that much attention to his "husband"-hostage when he did it. Maybe he'd only been going through the motions of setting up a scene, so that it would be what an outside viewer would expect to see upon entering the room of a supposedly-loving couple, because that would make a lot more sense.

Probably the second one, since Clark wasn't in the process of staining the antique upholstery a lovely red-black, having not (yet) been impaled with several Kryptonite bullets with a follow-on rant interspersed by some rather inventive cursing.

Great. Just great. Yet another thing he had to worry about -- not only were people going to be watching him eating -- and knowing what and how much he ate -- but if somebody wandered by while he was asleep and not wearing his glasses...

Well, maybe he could just lock his door and barricade it at night? Wanting privacy in his own bedroom shouldn't be too unreasonable a thing to ask, right?

"Didn't Lane ever take your glasses off of your face for you?" Lex asked him, leaning forward slightly, and this time Clark couldn't help but cringe.

"Sometimes," Clark had to admit. "Not often." And mostly that had been in the bedroom, right before they'd... done the sort of thing that neither he nor Lex would ever, _ever_ be doing with each other. _**Ever.**_ There were limits.

"Mm," Lex sounded off, and if it wasn't clear to him what Clark meant by his words, his blush was probably filling in the blanks for him.

Clark squirmed slightly in his seat on the couch.

"Well," Lex said, authoritatively, as he rose from his chair. "You had best not be letting anyone else take off your glasses in the future, least of all Lane."

Clark stared up at him blankly, because why in the heck would he let anybody do that? The last thing he needed was somebody finding out he was Superman now!

For some reason Lex decided to take his lack of response as a cue to stalk over to him and loom above him, and he suddenly looked incredibly dangerous.

"You had best not think about cheating on me with anyone else while I'm in office, Kent!" Lex snarled down at him.

" _What?_ " Clark yelped, because, _What?!?!_

Lex's eyes narrowed.

Clark was stunned, completely stunned. And knew he should say something -- _anything_ would be better than nothing at this point, god... -- but he was having trouble thinking of what in the world he should say.

After opening and closing his mouth a few times, he finally got out, "Who would I even find who would want to do that with me?"

Because, really, there was zero chance of _that_ ever happening. Clark wasn't stupid. _Nobody_ would want to risk Lex Luthor coming down on them like that, expressing any sort of interest whatsoever -- romantic or otherwise -- in something or someone upon whom Lex had even the slightest claim of ownership, legitimate or not. --And that was even if someone _did_ , for whatever strange and completely insane reason, somehow decide that they were interested in Clark like that in the first place, which was an even less likely proposition than somebody wanting to take Lex on.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex wasn't sure whether he ought to be more dismayed at his own accidental misunderstanding of the man's lack of response, and overreaction to such, or to the man's true lack of comprehension and complete naivete.

Frankly, it wouldn't matter if Kent was as ugly as a baboon's behind -- he was the 'First Husband', second to power-personified in this country now, and if he thought that that alone wouldn't have people knocking at his door at all hours if they thought they could get away with it, well...

...He wouldn't last long.

And now Lex was starting to rethink the merits of having a pushover for a 'husband'. After all, he couldn't just lock the man up like a cloistered nun -- people would talk. And he had considered previously that having to stay by Kent's side at all times to shepherd him through every social function would be incredibly inconvenient. However, he had originally thought that he would be able to find a trustworthy individual to supervise Kent when he might need to go off and excuse himself to deal with things one-on-one with other ambassadors and leaders and the like. But, reassessing how the events of that day had played out with the cook...

In the short term, that might no longer be feasible. Some of the general staff might be sympathetic, but such sympathy would only go so far, and Lex hadn't had enough time to judge the changes the afternoon's events had caused in the opinions of his own staff. Because his own people had had mixed reactions to the events, and not ones which Lex had fully anticipated. He'd quickly come to realize that some of them might still be trusted to perform such oversight on Kent, but most of his closest staff had grown to despise Kent very quickly, and vocally -- to Lex. Lex had allowed for some amount of difficulty or lack of skill, but he hadn't realized to what extent Kent would be found unsuitable -- the man was truly oblivious to what high-society life actually entailed and required, it seemed.

This might not have been such a problem under other less trying circumstances, but Lex had picked his staff well, and those who had come with him to serve under him for the length of his term in office adored him. And by all accounts, the vast majority of them seemed to direly resent the tangled web of lies Kent had more or less foisted upon Lex -- and with the way the progression had played out thus far, those who didn't yet would soon if they didn't already -- lies Lex would not have even considered taking on otherwise. He'd expected some of that, but not from nearly every quarter.

And the maintenance of those lies _would_ be making Lex's life and work in office that much more difficult by extension, especially so with Kent being absolutely incapable of performing even the least of the proper duties generally expected of one in his position. Even a pushover could make small talk and be unassuming and inoffensive, but someone who had no concept of what their perceived power could draw to them was far worse than merely dangerous. Kent was a ticking timebomb of a PR disaster just waiting to happen. ...And this would surprise none of his staff, given what Kent had unwittingly caused already, simply by keeping his mouth shut after causing that scene at the Planet.

But once Kent's complete incompetence in that arena was well-known, the very worst of that hateful resentment would be fostered in the most-trusted of his staff -- those who had known full well that Lex had not been married prior to Kent's actions. Because Lex realized that most of his staff still believed that those actions had led to Lex's decision-to-'marry' in response to the press of the previous day. --Untrue in part, because while Lex certainly would not have considered such a 'solution' without the circumstances that had brought about its genesis in his mind. It had been his own decision, divorced from further outside influence, and not one he'd felt pressured into in any way. However, he doubted any of his people had truly reconciled themselves to the thought yet, given the aftermath of the meltdown the majority of them had had in his office later that morning. They'd each in turn now come to him to individually express their grave doubts about the situation at-hand (though the majority of them had inconveniently managed to do so well-after he'd had the paperwork finalized by his very-efficient business staff, over the course of the day, albeit with honesty and concern in mind when they did, long after they could have swayed his decision; he'd not had the benefit of accurate knowledge to be able to take into account their willingness to both toe -- and hold -- the line, or lack of willingness thereof). Paradoxically, that meant Lex could trust his 'most-trusted' of staff the least with Kent's well-being now -- not without risking major turnover.

So for now, Lex would have to take things into his own hands. He'd have to keep Kent close, and make sure the revelations of power-by-proxy neither went to the man's head, nor crushed him entirely -- because those were the two most likely outcomes, barring intervention. --Not that Lex planned on Kent actually _having_ any power while he was in office, but that -- like so many other things -- would take time to set up. In the meantime, either the sudden attention and inevitable pandering that would be heaped on Kent **personally** would be taken entirely the wrong way -- a heady mix to overinflate what little ego he had, with that naivete in play -- or it would go entirely the opposite direction and -- more likely, given his earlier reaction of total disbelief -- cause some onset of mild paranoia, with Kent believing that he was being made a jest of in some way _by everyone_ , and turn him into even more of a stuttering wreck.

...Except that Kent hadn't been much of a 'stuttering wreck' since much earlier that morning.

Lex shook himself. Why had he been thinking of Kent as a pushover again, when he'd just learned otherwise to a dramatic extent not a few hours earlier? Because he did seem to have some backbone in certain matters, as that afternoon had showcased quite prominently on two entirely separate matters.

...Then again, Kent hadn't exactly acted out towards the now-fired cook, or to any of the other White House personnel he'd been exposed to thus far. Was it only to Lex himself that he displayed such behavior?

That would be a problem of an entirely different sort.

The reporter shifted in place uncomfortably under Lex's long gaze, and when Lex heard someone's stomach growl -- and it wasn't him -- and they were the only two people in the room... and Kent was blushing up a storm, beet red with embarrassment like that...

Well, there was nothing for it but for Lex to sigh, and pinch the bridge of his nose, and call it a night, now was there?

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Get up," Lex ordered him almost wearily, and that had to be better than the long thousand-yard stare he'd been giving Clark for the last way-too-long, right?

So, Clark -- not one to look a possible gift-horse in the mouth -- got up.

Lex walked past him for the door, and Clark started to follow him, before he thought the better of it and quickly retrieved his shoes from the floor in front of the couch.

"Where are we going?" Clark asked as he hopped on one foot forward, 'attempting' to walk at the same time he got his shoes on -- or at least gain a little forward motion without looking too un-clumsy about it.Too much would look contrived; too little would raise eyebrows in a very different way.

"We're going out to eat," Lex said, and to that Clark's immediate and relieved response was:

"Okay."

Lex paused in the doorway, and Clark had to pull himself to a nearly-stumbling halt to keep from running into him as Lex turned back towards him.

"'Okay'?" Lex queried of him, like that was a confusing response somehow.

"Well, yeah," Clark said, tugging his other shoe on midair, then dropping his knee and putting his foot back to the floor. "You fired the cook and pissed off the staff, remember? I kind of _hope_ we're eating out." Frankly, it'd put Clark's mind at ease, since he wasn't sure how he'd be able to warn Lex about hijinks with the food. He'd have to resort to extreme clumsiness otherwise, and Clark really didn't look forward to having to accidentally overturn a table or two, or being such a clutz as to go about dropping dishes or something in his immediate future.

So yeah, Clark was definitely looking forward to eating dinner at someplace that wasn't on the premises. ...Besides, what, Lex had expected him to say 'no'?

Lex frowned at him slightly, and Clark tried not to let Lex's provoked-thought state get to him. Because, honestly, if Lex hadn't realized Clark was Superman _even after taking off Clark's glasses himself_ , well... as long as Clark didn't rip off his own glasses, glare down at Lex right in his face, and start spouting platitudes right and left, he was probably okay.

...Well, maybe the platitudes he could still get away with if he was careful and interspersed them with some mumbling? The glasses-staying-off-while-getting-stared-at part, not so much.

With the glasses _on_ , however, he was probably perfectly okay for getting stared at a lot, mainly because it wasn't like Lex could just _think_ his way into figuring out Clark was (or, well, _had been_ ) Superman, or Lex would have done **that** a _long_ time ago.

Getting back to the more pressing concerns at hand, though...

"We're not eating out anyplace fancy, are we?" Clark asked, as Lex moved out of the doorway and down the hallway. "Because I don't have that much money on me, and --what?" he said as he got a flat stare for his trouble.

"I'm paying," Lex informed him, as they moved along.

...Right. " _So_ sorry," Clark said in clipped tones, and kind of too pissed off not to show it. "For a second there I forgot I was a kept man."

Clark blinked a couple times as Lex's walking motion... stuttered or something, and "...Did you just _trip_ over--?"

"--The carpet isn't even," Lex said, sounding a bit testy, which had Clark glancing behind them, looking for the bump in the stuff, because _he_ hadn't noticed any--

Lex grabbed his hand and increased his pace, leaving Clark scrambling to put his attention back in front of him again, as he found himself needing to go along with being _pulled_ along for a long moment, before he was able to safely lengthen his own stride. ...Which was overall a nice change of pace, actually, because he hardly ever got to walk along at his usual natural speed -- well, outside of _speeding along_ anyway. Usually he had to be careful about matching other people's paces, or risk either standing out or coming across as just plain rude when he left them in the dust.

With Lex, that was hardly an issue, though.

The hand-holding was just a tad weird, because even with Clark keeping up with Lex, Lex didn't let go of him.

 _Okay..._ "So," Clark began, "you know I don't really like being a kept man," Clark began.

"Mm-hm," Lex said, sounding like he was mostly ignoring him.

"But I like you being in politics even less," Clark stated decisively, as they passed a few of the night staff on duty, and did Lex just make a choking sound at him?

Lex navigated both himself and Clark around a corner corridor, and the set of his shoulders got just a bit flatter as they passed by another few late-night staffers at the junction into in the next hallway. Lex opened his mouth to say something, but before he got anything out, Clark overrode him quickly. He wasn't done yet, not by a long shot; he wasn't going to hand it over just _yet_.

"--And if you'd ever asked my opinion on the subject, I would have told you exactly what I thought about it, dear," Clark said, and he got an internal grin at the spark that went off in Lex's eye at that oh-so lightly-caustic ' _dear_ '. "'Wanting to avoid the media' as an excuse not to talk until after the election really only gets you so far."

Lex took in a breath, then let it out slowly. "You could have said something sooner," he put out there thinly, glancing over at him.

"Would that have been _before_ that phone call where you informed me of your intent to run for office, five minutes before your live broadcast announcing such to the rest of the planet, or _after_ that, when you'd told me during that same phone call that we needed to cool things off for awhile until after the election?" Clark eyed him sidelong as he said such, quite primly, making himself out to be clearly the wronged party in their made-up conversation.

Clark watched the muscles in Lex's throat tense several times -- Lex's equivalent of practically choking on his words -- before he finally said, "You still could've said something."

"--Because screaming at you at the top of my lungs in the middle of the Daily Planet bullpen during work hours would've come off as endearing, supportive, and discreet?" Clark said oh-too-innocently. He even had a candidate cellphone conversation in mind: he remembered Lois being out on assignment undercover, calling him on a burner phone, shortly before the special bulletin went out. Both the terse conversation, and his bad mood after the hangup fit beautifully -- almost too well -- compounded by his annoyed reaction to the broadcast, the content of which he'd been expecting for weeks, given superhearing and the chatter coming from LexCorp next door.

Lex paused for a moment at his interruption, then added briskly, "And marrying you _hardly_ counts as 'cooling it off'," ending his pronouncement with a full-on narrow-eyed glare.

Too bad for his glare, Clark was feeling more than a little invincible at the moment, in no small part due to the lack of a lack of witnesses. Lex wouldn't exactly make a good impression on his new White House staff if he was known as an abusive asshole, or worse. Though, he wondered if Lex had noticed that some of the far-too-many cleaning staff in this hallway were the same people from two hallways back. And he'd thought the reporters at the Planet gossipped something fierce. ...Well, at least they were more subtle about it. Sort of. Though Lex's response was interesting, and gave him a timeframe for when he must've backdated the paperwork to show their fake marriage as having occurred -- after his pronouncement for candidacy, and well before the story broke that morning.

"I'm still not hearing an apology in there," Clark said. Lex squeezed his hand in a near-crushing grip. Clark didn't give an inch, just calmly squeezed back exactly -- and only -- as hard as Lex did. "And if you think you're going to getting anything out of me without a decent one, I see a lot of long, cold nights in your future." There. And now they both had an excuse for a lack of conjugal- _anything_ at night between them, for the next however-long. Certainly until Clark figured out a way out of this mess.

Then Clark realized he'd lost Lex for a moment about a half-step after he stopped, Lex's hand slipping out of his.

Clark came to a halt, turned back around, and looked at Lex quizzically. They were only about a yard and a half from the door to the outside, and they had a nigh-on audience to their 'bickering' behind them, given the time of night. Why had he stopped?

Lex was standing there, stock-still, his eyes unreadable but boring into his. His hands were lightly clenched in fists.

"I'm sorry," Lex said, and Clark almost blinked in shock.

Luckily, he was a lot better at controlling his reactions now than he had been back in Smallville. So instead of standing there motionless and staring -- like a blindsided idiot -- he played the part Lex obviously expected of him.

"Well, it's a _start_ ," Clark told him, giving him a humoring-the-significant-other smile (learned from Lois) as he stepped forward, then gave him a quick peck to the forehead. --There; that'd make it clear that they still wouldn't be having sex, obviously. It also fit much better than a blanket 'you're forgiven' at what from anyone else would have been a very paltry apology; Lex Luthor's husband certainly wouldn't be some kind of pushover in that regard -- not if he'd managed to guilt or otherwise poke Lex into marrying him when they were supposed to be spending the majority of their time away from each other, as a promise to carry them over in the interim, given Lex's touring schedule around the country and away from Metropolis.

At least, Clark thought that was what Lex had been going for, anyway. Clark hadn't been assigned to his campaign trail. They really couldn't've spent much time together during Lex's presidential bid; trying to imply otherwise would just expose the lie for what it was.

In true 'Lois' fashion, Clark picked up Lex's hand again and started for the door again, all-smiles. Lex caught up momentarily, and Clark started swinging their hands back and forth and, glancing over at Lex, noticed that Lex had a little more color in his complexion than usual. ...Well, he'd just have to deal with it. So what if swinging their hands was teenage-romanced? Lex had started it with the hand-holding in the first place!

Lex opened the door for the both of them, and they (finally) exited the building.

The presidential limo was waiting right there for them, with a small cavalcade front and back, and a member of the Secret Service holding the rear door of the limousine open for them.

Clark didn't have much of a chance to react to any of it, though, before Lex all but shoved him into the backseat in front of him, and the secret service man shut the door on them.

Clark glanced around. They were alone, except for the driver, and the glass partition was up. No audience, and no real witnesses. Except for the driver.

~*~*~*~*~*~


End file.
